The panel of experts in charge of assigning a tender to build Australia’s new high speed Broadband network have released the process guidelines for it’s development. Prospective tenders will have 17 weeks in which to lodge proposals, however the expert taskforce would then require 3 months in which to scrutinize and assess the proposals prior to giving a report detailing recommendations to Senator Coonan. The time limitations involved with the decision making suggest that a successful tender candidate will not be announced prior to this year’s election. Where that will leave the whole Broadband network initiative at that stage will be anyone’s guess, especially if Labor do move into office.
Communications Minister Helen Coonan said the government would not be adopting a one size fits all mentality over the broadband network. “The guidelines do not specify that the high speed network must be a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network. It could contain a fibre-to-the-home upgrade path or another alternative high speed broadband platform.
According to the opposition communications spokesman ‘Stephen Conroy’, the current guidelines are not detailed enough and fail to meet some vital criteria such as the extent of coverage areas and minimum connection speeds.
“Given the government’s disastrous track record of backing obsolete technologies, no one should feel secure that these guidelines will deliver Australia a future-proof broadband solution,” Senator Conroy said.
Read Senator Helen Coonan’s ‘A framework for our next high speed broadband network’ media release here
View the Members of the Expert Taskforce here
Download and view the ‘Expert Taskforce draft guidelines’ PDF here (File size: 480Kb)
Read the entire article here at ZDNet
